This invention relates generally to digital messaging, and more particularly to receiving and providing confirmation that a message has been delivered. Additionally, once a message has been delivered, information related to the state of the recipient may also be conveyed.
Messages that are sent to devices, such as mobile phones, are often time sensitive. Verifying that a message has been received, and when it was received, can be crucial to operating a business or arranging social gatherings in everyday life. Additionally, employers can utilize delivery confirmation to ensure that a message has been received by on call personnel, limiting situations in which the employers lack proper staffing. However, without explicit acknowledgment from a recipient of a message, a sender can only hope that the message was delivered as intended.
Messages are often sent with a desired outcome in mind. This desired outcome can be related to a personal, business or systemic situation in which a sender of a message wants to induce a desired outcome. Currently there is no method to confirm delivery and sample the state of the receiver upon delivery. Disclosed is a system that confirms delivery of messages, provides feedback to the sender on the current and subsequent state of the receiver, and maintains privacy by not revealing the contents of the message.
Once a message has been received, it is valuable to the sending device to understand various aspects of the state of the receiving device, and or subsequent states of the user of the receiving device. This information is useful in making communication more effective and to understand if a message, once received, has lead to the desired outcome. Presently, there is no effective method for obtaining feedback related to the effect a message has on a user who receives a message.
Providing delivery notifications is further complicated by multiple operating systems being used by several network providers to deliver messages in various formats. Existing methods for providing message delivery confirmation may necessitate that communicating devices run the same operating system, e.g., BlackBerry OS, or require interaction from a user to confirm receipt of a message.